Mitt Romney says that "six studies" prove that his tax plan adds up. They don't.
Some of them reveal how Romney's tax plan could conceivably achieve what he's promised, under certain conditions — or at least come closer to it.
But others contradict the stated objectives of Romney's tax plan and make questionable assertions about how he'd pay for his rate cuts, leaving some central questions about Romney's tax plan unanswered and fueling the ongoing calls for more specifics.
Not all of the "six studies" are formal quantitative research: Three are online articles and one is an op-ed. But all try to answer the essential conundrum that the Tax Policy Center described in its original analysis: Romney wants to pay for $5 trillion in tax cuts by getting rid of tax deductions and exclusions that benefit Americans earning more than $200,000.
But getting rid of those upper-income tax breaks doesn't fully pay for the rate cuts, the Tax Policy Center says: The only way to do this without increasing the deficit would be to raise taxes on lower-income Americans by an average of $2,000 to make up for a $86 billion annual shortfall - a finding that the Obama campaign now routinely cites in its attack ads.
Two of the "studies" the Romney campaign has cited are an op-ed and a blog post by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein. He says it's possible to finance Romney's tax cuts fully by closing loopholes and deductions, but only if you raise taxes on those households with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000.
And here is what Steven Colbert had to say about the Romney/Ryan mathemagical budget...
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